Sustainability’s a hard sell right now. Our impulse is just to be unsustainable for a while. We want run out into the streets shouting “WE’VE ENOUGH SUSTAINING. I WANT AN OUTDOOR HANGOVER. TAKE MY MONEY AND GIVE ME A SUBSTANDARD POLLUTING THING. I JUST WANT TO FEEL ALIVE.”

But sustainability isn’t just a joyless sequence of “stop that” and “you can’t have that” and “this is wrong”.

Deirdre O'Kane joins Colm O'Regan, plus actors Sharon Mannion and Paul Tylak, to explore the weird, wild and wonderful world of staycations and holidaying in Ireland this summer.

Pullets. It’s one of the words from my childhood that I assumed that everyone used. Words like haggart -the field or farmyard closest to the house- or budget -a knapsack sprayer my father wore like the Mandalorian (without any protective gear, natch) or Latchiko which was a catch-all for people who’d be hanging around and might possibly steal a lawnmower. And then I didn’t hear them again for years. But yesterday, I thought again about pullets.

They’re at it again. Flying kites. But this time they’re flying kites about the summer. After a year of warnings about bad things, now there are hints about the good things.

The vaccination prodding is still there though. To see if they get an adverse reaction. Last week they jabbed us with a hint that the under-30s might get it before the 30-50s. People got het up. Not me. As someone who works in a 'creative' industry, my whole life consists of accepting that someone younger and less deserving will get a break I wanted. So I’m totally zen about when I get the one-two.

Do you know what I miss? The Extra Programme.

Like power cuts, hitchhiking and warning hitchhikers that ‘that car window didn’t close properly so don’t open it, like a good man’, the Extra Programme was a feature of life thirty years ago, that we accepted as normal. I never quite understood where the Extra Programme came from.

The little ones are starting to grow into actual people. When do you notice that? Is it when they have opinions? Tastes in music?

“Poxy chores”. When you read that, there’s a strong chance you’ve lowered your chin, put on a Dublin accent and started singing like Ronnie Drew

Episode 22 of Colm O’Regan Wants a Word for RTE Radio 1 was out on St Patrick’s Day and my guest was the fascinating Dr Sarah-Ann Buckley

By the time you read this, I might already be a millionaire.s

Call it self-care, call it mellowing, call it ‘no one was listening anyway‘. But I'm trying not to get cross about unimportant things. I calmed down about apostrophes

Okay enough messing around, this week we get into the Matrix. Okay not that matrix. The mathematical matrix. But this one is way more powerful than a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality. That’s piddly. Mathematical matrices are used in everywhere, from making computer games

Episode 22 of Colm O’Regan Wants a Word for RTE Radio 1 was out on St Patrick’s Day and my guest was the fascinating Dr Sarah-Ann Buckley

When normal life is abnormal sometimes you feel you need a prize for the smallest things

Warning: This column may contain traces of looking on the bright side.

At least now I know what I want for my birthday in May: new slippers.

Spring: I realise now that was taking it for granted. Sure, didn’t the year always get round to it eventually? In primary school we were told it started in February, but part of growing up means understanding that February is, in its hole, the start of spring.